changeling
by Gender Outlaw
Summary: Naruto sleeps, but the Kyuubi never does. 'Even in his dreams, he can taste the chakra, feel it all round him, flooding him.'


The way people think..  
is different from the way demons think.

- Mononoke

* * *

**1.**

His first memory is of water.

He is forced down, pressure on his tiny chest. Submerged, drowning in it. This water surrounds him, but it can't be real. He can feel it. It is energy, it is life, it is blood.

It is foreign chakra filling him to the core.

**2.**

He skins his knees on the floor.

The wood is rough - unhewed - and splinters are thrust into his legs and wrists. He too young to know how to walk and falls often.

He pulls at the pieces that stick out with his fingernails and teeth.

At first he cries at what blood rises. But when he wakes in the morning the pain is always gone. Over time he comes to think of this fleeting hurt as an illusion, a minced dream.

**3.**

There are faded yellow curtains hanging high over the kitchen sink so far out of his reach it looks like a faded parody of the morning sun.

He sleeps until late afternoon, when the light warms his bed and room until he is sweltering inside of it.

He has never worn shoes, and runs barefoot from outdoors to in. He digs his toes into the loose dirt, and waits for his roots to grow like the plants do.

He can feel the earth surrounding him, like fire it is so alive.

**4.**

The world is bathed in whispering colors, all around him.

He sleeps in the great hulking mass of roots that exists beneath the trees, so large, so ensnarled about itself there is no beginning.

Light surrounds the plants.

Everywhere he looks, there is light. In his dreams even, there is light.

**5.**

He learns a new word, _chakra_.

The living energy, he hears it called. He doesn't quite understand what this means.

But in the moments between sleep and waking, he can feel something lingering at the edges of his vision. Slowly waiting for entrance, like the sunrise.

**6.**

Kakashi does not notice that Naruto flinches at the _Chidori _until long after he first used it in the boy's presence.

He attributes this to fear.

Kakashi considers having a talk with Naruto about the shinobi's duty, and his thoughts wander. The boy needs to be aware, strong.

_' You should not fear the technique ',_ Kakashi tries to tell the boy, _' you must fear the caster. '_

Naruto doesn't reply back. Just watches his teacher with wide eyes.

The light surrounding Kakashi is warped and sickly looking. Naruto sees it and wonders why no one else mentions the unnaturalness.

_' Do not fear ',_ Kakashi says, using his technique again, though Naruto flinches. The corrupting of _chakra _makes the boy's skin bead with sweat, his stomach knot.

It is twisted and tastes like death.

Naruto begins to associate this sensation with humans.

**7.**

The earth is cool and pleasant, and Naruto closes his eyes, his face buried in the tall stalks of grass.

_' Come on out of the darkness ', _Iruka calls to him, knowing the boy is hiding somewhere among the trees.

Iruka huffs, and pushes brush aside to look for Naruto, crying again and again, _' come out '._ His feet tromping through the growth._ ' Come out, Naruto '._

But he is so heavy, wearing shinobi sandals that thud against the dirt and loose bramble, that Naruto can hear the rustling through greenery wherever the man goes. Iruka is loaded with human possessions which weigh him down. Burdens, responsibilities.

This sound echoes around Naruto, lulls him to sleep.

**8.**

He never wakes. Even in his dreams, he can taste the _chakra_, feel it all round him, flooding him.

The light is everywhere.

**9.**

There is someone else in Naruto's body. Iruka is damned sure of this.

The only reason, the obvious answer is so frightening he pulls Naruto aside, determined to talk his way through to the boy. Only to end up standing before him, mouth open, and unable to speak.

Words fail him.

And the body that was once Naruto's watches Iruka with eyes squinted shut.

_There is no beginning, there is no end. _

_Just red, red chakra. Blood as far as he can see. _

_No end. _

* * *

' ' In this way .. in increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us - not always in one momentous event but in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss. ' '

In essence, a Changeling is the body of a child that no longer has the "kid" inside. The body walks, talks, goes to school-but the child inside lives somewhere else, far from waking awareness.

The great metaphysician, Gurdjeff, asserted that all of physical life is a dream, and for humans to remain here in physical form each of us has to be entranced, deep in a kind of soul sleep.

**"Problems With Sleep", by Daniel Jacob. **


End file.
